Taking the Digital Innovation Journey beyond Technology: A Human-Centered Design Approach

The digital innovation era creates new challenges for companies and amplifies the gap between leaders and followers. This paper builds on a human-centered design (HCD) approach, arguing that companies can bridge this gap by mastering the human aspects of their entire digital journey. Based on a study conducted online with fifteen executives of leading companies involved in digital initiatives, provide insights into how companies can use HCD approaches to help them engage customers and employees and better navigate the digital innovation journey. HCD approaches can drive digital adoption forward by assisting companies in building empathy with people and developing a systemic environment that encourages them to be more flexible, optimize the user's experience and facilitate the co-creation of digital innovation solutions. By gaining a proper understanding of customer and employee needs, desires, and pain points, companies can better align technology and business goals and prioritize areas that will have the most significant impact on customers' day-to-day lives and across the entire company.